' Retribution' among all-time worst video games (review)

Protagonist Jake Conway is the walking embodiment of every tired stereotype about Vietnam veterans and biker culture.

Every video game has its share of shortcomings, but a title this profoundly broken comes along only once or twice in a generation.

Let's be clear: "Ride to Hell: Retribution" ($20; PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) is an absolute mess. Right from the get-go, a bizarre intro transitions from cutscene to turret segment without warning or context and leaves most players dead before they've gotten their bearings. It's a sense of bewildered failure that permeates this offering from start to miserable finish.

"Ride to Hell: Retribution" is the video game equivalent of Tommy Wiseau's "The Room," a mish-mash of nonsensical plot, clumsy sex scenes and disjointed pacing. And while the first 30 or so minutes provide a so-bad-its-good quality that has to be experienced to be believed, even that misguided virtue is stripped away once you fall into the monotony of terrible mechanics and boring combat.

Protagonist Jake Conway is a late-1960s Vietnam War veteran who returns home to live with his uncle and younger brother. Their hometown of Dead End embodies every known stereotype about biker culture. Thugs rule the streets, women are merely objects to fight over and the drug trade runs rampant.

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Jake has barely been back in the States for a few hours before he and brother Mikey go out for a cheeseburger and the younger Conway ends up murdered by a ruthless gang. Jake takes a bullet, but lives to fight another day, and our lackluster, predictable quest for revenge is at hand.

"Retribution" isn't strong in any visual category. Landscapes are bare and blocky. Textures routinely pop in and out of view. At one point I tried to take cover behind a stack of crates that disappeared, only to reappear moments later.

Nowhere are the low-quality graphics more distracting, however, than in character models. Everyone's hands are huge -- easily the size of their torsos. Misshapen, muscle-bound bikers and women of impossible proportions populate Dead End. Some enemies when shot twist and contort like Gumby, then deflate to the ground once finally killed.

Combat is another in a long line of failures. Jake can take on bad guys hand-to-hand or use guns, the latter being ridiculously underpowered. Of the several enemy varieties who pour at you by the thousands, even the most hapless don't flinch when shot.

Enemies wearing goalie masks, meanwhile, are inexplicably immune to headshots. You'll need to fire more than a dozen rounds to bring them down. Through it all, a clumsy aiming system and troublesome camera make hitting anything from long range all but impossible.

Once thugs get close, you'll have no choice but to switch to hand-to-hand combat, which locks you into a sluggish faceoff with the nearest enemy. It's impossible to break free from this mechanic until your foe is dead, so you're a goner if there are bad guys nearby who still feel like shooting.

There's a bare-bones upgrade system that lets Jake sell drugs for cash and use that money to buy weapons or learn fighting skills. New guns still don't dent most baddies, and by the time you can afford anything worthwhile, you'll have long since begun to resent every minute you spend playing this game.

Jake may burn for payback, but he's also easily distracted. The very first foe I beat up upon setting out for revenge was hassling a woman. The reward for Jake's heroism was a comically uncomfortable roll in the hay with the unnamed beauty, who then disappeared without a word. "Retribution" actually tracks how many women you've "rescued" in the campaign, right next to how many paint cans you've found to customize your bike. These scenes appear with shameful regularity and do nothing to advance the story.

When Jake isn't fighting or making new friends, he's tooling around the countryside on his motorcycle. Again, sloppy controls sap all of the fun out of this endeavor. If you crash or lose course, the game warps you back to the middle of the road.

The same goes for the town of Dead End, which looks like it should be an open-world sandbox, but instead is a long walk between three physical upgrade stations that should have just been incorporated into the pause menu. As soon as Jake ventures the slightest bit away, he's teleported back into the confined space.

Simply put, "Road to Hell: Retribution" is a terrible game. If you can stomach the violence and gratuitous sex, you should rent it, play for an hour and then send it back just to see how awful a video game can be. Another one this bad probably won't come around for a long time.

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